VAT Calculator (EU/UK)

VAT is the tax that surprises American sellers most, because the US has nothing like it. You sell a €20 item in Germany and the customer pays €20 plus 19% VAT — but who sends that VAT to the government, and from which bank account, is where people get stuck.

The first thing to know: each EU country sets its own rate. The UK is now outside the EU entirely, so Brexit turned one VAT system into two. Our calculator handles the big ones — UK 20%, Germany 19%, France 20%, Italy 22%, Spain 21% — and lets you type any other rate if you sell somewhere smaller.

The trap is the registration threshold. Most countries make you register for VAT only after you cross a local sales threshold (often around €10,000 across the EU under the OSS rules, or a per-country figure). Below it, you may not need to register at all. Above it, you owe VAT in that country, and registering late means paying from your own pocket for sales that already happened. I've seen sellers hit with a bill for months of uncollected VAT because they didn't watch the threshold.

OSS — the One Stop Shop — simplifies this by letting you report all EU VAT in one country instead of filing in each. It does not remove the tax; it just saves you from ten sets of paperwork. Worth using once you're over the threshold and selling across borders.

This tool shows the VAT on a net price and the gross the customer pays. Use it to check your math before you list, and to see how much of your displayed price is actually tax you'll hand over. The number here is the liability, not pocket money.